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Has Religion Become an “Elite Marker”?

Has Religion Become an “Elite Marker”?

Last updated on: February 25, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Has Religion Become an “Elite Marker”? 2026-02-21T17:11:57-05:00 Gene Veith

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The well-known social scientist Joel Kotkin has uncovered some surprising details about the purported upsurge in religion. Noting the growth of religion among the highly educated, he thinks religion may be becoming an “elite marker.”

Kotkin’s own study with Bheki Mahlobo for Chapman University’s Center for Demographics and Policy is entitled Is There a New Religious Revival? He concludes that while we mustn’t exaggerate, something is happening. The data, he says, indicate “a complex spiritual restructuring that intersects with social mobility, demographic resilience, and a profound intellectual realignment.”

The study focuses on three factors: (1) the increased social utility of faith; (2) the preference for traditional religions over the more liberal versions; and (3) the rise of religion among those who are highly educated and the intellectual elite.

Read the study. For this post, I’d just like to bring up some of the details he found, which Kotkin wrote about in his RealClearInvestigations post entitled Surprising Revival: Gen Z Men & Highly Educated Lead Return to Religion.

We have already learned about the rise of religion among men, Generation Z, and Europeans, which he gets into. But this report brings out other intriguing details.

He found a significant correlation between education and attendance at religious services. Contrary to the long-time secularist assumption that religion is only for the ignorant and uneducated, church attendance goes up the more education someone has. Among people with graduate degrees, 30% go to church every week. Among those with a bachelor’s degree, 28% go to church weekly. Among those with just a high school education, the percentage drops to 23%.

Furthermore, says Kotkin, religion contributes to education, citing the increasing enrollment in Christian schools and homeschools. “Inner-city boys who attend religious school are twice as likely to graduate from college as their socio-economic counterparts in public schools, notes Tulane sociologist Ilana Horwitz.”

He also notes the “shift in the epistemic upper class. This group is defined as the scientists, philosophers, and public intellectuals who shape the boundaries of acceptable discourse.” Scientists, for example, used to be the most skeptical about religion. But today, only 15% of scientists believe that science conflicts with religion, and 70% see no conflict. Younger scientists, those under 35, attend church more frequently than Baby Boomer scientists, suggesting a trend. In Asia, scientists are more religious than the general public. Kotkin also cites the growth of religion among tech workers, as well as public intellectuals, as we have been chronicling.

In philosophy, he cites the influence of Jűrgen Habermas and his call for the “post-secular” (something I discuss in more detail in my book Post-Christian):

The intellectual framework for this shift was laid by Jürgen Habermas, widely considered the world’s leading philosopher of rationality. In a dramatic reversal, by 2001 Habermas argued that the secular state lives on borrowed capital, relying on moral motivations like solidarity and sacrifice that it cannot generate itself. He advocated what he calls the “Post-Secular Society” where secularism sheds its arrogance and engages again with religious traditions. Habermas argues that religious communities bear intuitions about human dignity and justice that secular reason has lost and urgently needs to prevent the further commodification of human life.

Kotkin combines the data about religion in the upper crust with evidence about the benefits of religion for the poor. Religion, he notes, creates “social capital,” because church congregations typically involve people of all socio-economic conditions interacting with each other and forming communities. This not only mitigates the loneliness and other pathologies, it can lead to social mobility and financial success:

The report found the degree of social interaction between low-income and high-income individuals as the single strongest predictor of whether a poor child would rise out of poverty. High exposure to wealthier peers increases lifetime earnings by an average of 20%.

Chetty’s team found that poorer people associate more with the affluent at religious institutions than at secular institutions like high schools, colleges, and workplaces. A low-income individual attending a religious congregation is significantly more likely to form a meaningful friendship with a high-income congregant than they would be in a workplace, school, or neighborhood group.

Thus, Kotkin thinks religion is emerging not only as an “elite marker,” but a means for becoming elite.

Social utility by itself, of course, is not a reason to believe. But the dysfunctions brought on by secularism and the fact that faith can heal them are evidence that Christianity corresponds to reality.

Photo: Joel Kotkin by Free Market Institute — “Texas and the Heartland: Key to the Future of the American Dream” at 0:39, cropped, brightened, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114661876

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